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Planting Ritual:
A Praise and Thanksgiving Ritual
A Promise To Keep...I have come to terms with the future.
From this day onward I will walk easy on Earth.
Plant trees. Destroy no other living things. Live in harmony with all creatures.
I will restore the Earth where I am. Use no more of its resources than I need.
And listen, listen to what it is telling me.AMEN.
A reading, as we begin...(to walk to that part of the Earth where we will plant the tree)
At the HEART OF THE EARTH, prayer is a sense of belonging. Belonging is the basic truth of our existence. We belong here. Life belongs here. Likewise, at the heart of gratefulness, in its deepest sense, we also find an expression of belonging.
When we say "Thank you" we really are saing "We belong together." That's why we sometimes find it so difficult to say "Thank you" - because we don't want to acknowledge our interdependence...
We all belong together, we are of each other. In this awareness we are freed from self-preoccupation - and only then, emptied of self, can we be filled with THANKS.
A reading, as we begin with...(in preparing that part of the Earth to plan the tree)
Healing the Whole ~ During this time of great imbalance on planet Earth we may feel ourselves torn between priorities of healing ourselves...and attempting to cure the social and economicills that beset our culture...Healing ourselves and working to resolve the contradictions in the human-Earth ecology is the same work...all healing involves making whole again - resolving the contradictions that exist between self and other, body and spirit, mind and nature...
Knowing that we are not encapsulated, self-enclosed entities, but rather fields of energy integrated with the environment, everything we do tranforms and reshapes the world. If our actions can destroy, so can they heal...
In this light, there is no distinction between physical activity and the work of the spirit. Precisely in the restoration of this balance between body and spirit lies the path for healing the greater whole...
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert
Repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
Love what it loves
~ Mary Oliver